.

.

Interview with
SIMONE SIMONS
of
EPICA

(January, 2021)

Interviewer – Amy Smith

.

.

For more than 15 years, Dutch symphonic metal titans, EPICA, pressed the pedal to the metal, passionately touring the globe time and again. After what lead vocalist, Simone Simons, describes as “having been sitting in a high-speed train without stopping at any destination whatsoever”, the band in 2018 decided it was high time for a well-deserved rest. As soon as the The Holographic Principle cycle came to a close with their 1000th show, the band went into hiatus.

Now, five years later, the band are ready to drop their eighth full length album, OMEGA. A record with a specifically written suites for orchestra and choir, featuring a wide range of ethnic instruments recorded around the world by some of the best native musicians out there. In short: They outdid themselves. And completed in the midst of a world pandemic, no less!

Simone Simmons took some time to catch up with AMNplify to discuss the album, what EPICA got up to during their ‘time off’, peppermint magnum ice-creams and taking photo’s with pregnant koalas.

.

.

Hello how are you?
I’m good. Here it’s morning, a bit of a time difference.
Happy new year, first of all!

2020 was a bit crazy wasn’t it?
Yeah just a little.
New year. New, symbolic fresh start of battling whatever crisis we are in around the world.

100%. It certainly impacted on all of us in many different ways. I know that, for EPICA, the release date for OMEGA, unfortunately had to be pushed back as well as a tour postponement. How have you been coping?
Well at the beginning of the pandemic we were still recording OMEGA. We would see our colleagues in the industry postponing their tours. I was at first optimistic, maybe naive, thinking our tour is in Autumn and things should be back to normal (laughs). We had to postpone the album and the tour and postpone the tour again, After already a sabbatical, having another sabbatical is maybe a little bit too much because we were all energised and fully motivated working on the new album with the thought that we were going to promote it on tour. We never would have imagined that it would take this long. Now, I am also afraid that the upcoming festival season, despite the arrival of the vaccine, that the festival season is still in jeopardy of being cancelled. I’m realistic and I keep that in the back of my mind, so by the time they are cancelled or postponed, I am not disappointed again. Although, I am very eager to get back on stage, I don’t want to get my hopes up too much.

That is completely understandable. But, I know that in the meantime you did release a few tracks to make the wait a bit less painful. How to you feel about the fans reception to the new tracks so far?
Great! The first single was Abyss Of Time and then we had Freedom. We also had one of the first acoustic covers we did. The response is like you say, the fans are thankful that they already get to hear some music. Because we had to postpone the release and it’s been a long wait between The Holographic Principle and OMEGA, It’s the longest gap we’ve had so far, the fans are a little bit impatient. But! We have two more singles coming out before the release of the album! So there’s more music to be released until the end of February.

.

.

Awesome! That’s great to hear!
Let’s talk a bit more about OMEGA. I would describe it as cinematic. It takes you on a journey both lyrically and sonically. What where your inspirations and influences for this album?
Life in general! I mean, the years going up to OMEGA, I was struggling with a lot of burnout but also having a very hectic lifestyle. Combining touring life with family life was not always easy. So my battery, I would say that I was extremely exhausted from touring and also the emotional stress of being away from my son. That drained me big time. But, I guess you go through phases in your life as well. Whatever is happening in society, we as musicians, as artists are a little bit of a mirror of what is happening, of course within ourselves, people close to us and what’s happening around in the world. Global warming is a big topic in one of my lyrics. Genome editing. What’s happening worldwide is a topic. But, most of all, this album is a very spiritual album. It’s the most profound, mature album in EPICA’s history. The name ‘OMEGA’ is actually referring to the Omega point, where you have the Big Bang, the creation of universe. Omega is the end, where basically everything comes together, spiritually and science. Everything in the universe is fated towards a final point of unification. It’s the end of our Kingdom of Heaven series. So this is the third and final Kingdom of Heaven song. It’s our eighth studio album. The number 8 is also very spiritual because if you put it on the side it’s the infinity symbol. Kingdom of Heaven is about life after death and it’s also number 8 on the album. So there is a lot of hidden symbolism on the album and in the artwork. The big life question, “What is the true meaning of life?”. How do we navigate through life within ourselves? We are all ‘Ying and Yang’. We are all made out of light and dark. We all have this labyrinth within ourselves in which we have to navigate ourselves. We hopefully find our way out of the labyrinth and don’t get lost within the labyrinth of ourselves.

That’s fascinating but quite a big topic to tackle.
Yeah! But EPICA have always been, at least our lyrics, not talking about the music, but lyrically we’ve always tried to touch on deeper matters than singing about, I dunno, the birds and the bees. We do have some love songs! (Laughs). But put in a metal jacket. We are not afraid to speak about our emotions and our thoughts. As an artist, where our voices are being heard, literally and figuratively, our fans read our lyrics, we have to put it to good use.

Absolutely! I find it fascinating the things that you said about the hidden meanings. Has this been years in the making? Was it’s conscious or did it just happen to work out like that?
After The Holographic Principle tour cycle ended, we said “Ok, now we are not going to tour for a while”. We don’t put the pressure on writing a new album. We just give ourselves the opportunity to be with our family and friends and recharge our batteries. The Holographic Principle, we had the biggest world tour ever. I was already feeling that my batteries were quite empty at the creating of that album. So, I was running on an empty battery for a long time. We were planning that sabbatical for a while, but we wanted to first finish the touring cycle. During our time off from the road we were writing our biography The Essence of Epica. We were preparing for the re-release of Design Your Universe, for the 10 year anniversary. We re-mixed the album and re-recorded acoustic tracks. We also came out with Attack on Titan EP. I mean, that was before we had the sabbatical, but there have been some releases between the The Holographic Principle  and OMEGA, but not a full length studio album. The writing and recording process of OMEGA went quite quickly. Of course, I can’t 100% say which band member was writing which songs and when, so I can’t 100% say how long it took from creation to birth. But, the actual intense songwriting between band members and then recording was about half a year, I would say.

.

.

Wow! So even though you were on ‘Hiatus’ you were still working very hard in the background! So, you do feel like you’ve had a good rest then?
Well, yes, kind of. I mean, we couldn’t completely let go of EPICA because behind the scenes there is still a lot to take care of. Of course, we didn’t have a strict working schedule, but our priority was the biography. So we were basically free from touring but we were still doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff. But that was OK! Writing the biography was also a little bit therapeutic because that was the one time that we could all really sit back and let all the old memories pass by again. Because we’ve been so busy that we never really had a lot of time to just reflect on all that we have achieved in our career and all the amazing experiences that we gathered since 2002.

That also had an impact on the songwriting for OMEGA because I saw that the songwriting process was a bit different for OMEGA. For the first time in a long time the band got together in the same room to jam, how did this impact the creation of OMEGA?
It had a positive impact! I mean, we now had no shows planned. So we had the time and energy to get together. I mean, we have to travel far in order to get together. We live in four different countries! We blocked our calendars for a week. We came together in this lovely Dutch villa, farm, air bnb in the middle of nowhere. Everybody had their own little studio set up in their own rooms. We would just work on the songs together in teams. Work on the vocal lines. Record some demo tracks. We would have breakfast together in the morning and have dinner together in the evening. It was just a very relaxed working strategy for us, to exchange our creativity with each other on a faster pace than if we were all to just be home and sending each other all the files digitally. We had an immediate exchange of musical ideas. It’s was fun. I enjoyed it. I look back to that week with fond memories. It was nice to be creative in a way that a lot of bands are. But, due to the fact that we live so far apart, it’s hard. We had that in the beginning of EPICA, for the first two albums, then we kinda found out that there are other nice places to live or love took us to another country. Of course modern technology is great! But, there’s something very unique and special about jamming together.

Yeah! Because you would feed off each other’s energy!
Yeah! It is actually a very different process.

.

.

So, obviously, jamming together was something you did differently. Was there any new instruments, techniques or approaches that you experimented with for this album?
Well, a new a new thing on the album, I would say, is the children’s choir. We always work with an adult choir, it’s a big part of EPICA. But on Coen’s, our keyboardist’s, bucket list was to work with a children’s choir. He was the one responsible for working with the choir. He’s transcribing the score for the choir. We loved the idea! I think that it totally added something special to the album. We also recorded with a full orchestra in Prague. We were lucky because the pandemic was coming closer but we still managed to record the orchestra and choir before it hit. The only thing we couldn’t record in our normal studio was Mark and my vocals. We were forced to search for a studio close by because we couldn’t travel. But that all worked out really well in the end.
We also have some Indian instruments or instruments recorded in India. Especially the oriental songs like Seal Of Solomon and Code of Life. We have a singer from an Indonesian metal band singing the intro of Code of Life. Just a little bit new and surprising, I would say.
I always have my favourite microphone that I record vocals with. But here we had to find that mic, or rent it somewhere. But all shops were closed because of the pandemic! So that was a little bit tricky. Every singer had their favourite or preferred mic, I also have mine (Laughs). We finally got it. We tested other mics but we weren’t completely happy with the sound. The studio producer is also very specific. I trust him of course. But! It all worked out in the end! If the pandemic had hit sooner, we would have had many problems finishing the album. Because, the orchestra and the choir require a lot of people in the same room. So, we kinda had good luck and bad luck!

It’s good to hear the positive side at least!
What is your experience as a woman in the music industry? I ask this because I personally know some women who work in the industry, both in bands and who work behind the scenes, whose skills and knowledge are often minimised. I’m wondering if you face any similar challenges?
Not necessarily. I mean, it is of course a male dominated world. I feel comfortable working with a lot of guys. I’d rather have that than work with a lot of women, I guess. That’s what I’m used to. That’s what I grew up in, basically. For me, the biggest challenge was just to know how to communicate with men. You know, men come from Mars and women come from Venus sort of thing (Laughs). We have a different way of getting our thoughts and feelings across. That’s something that I found difficult. Especially because I joined the music industry at a very young age. I was still a teenager. So I grew up around that. But, we often joke and say that I’m one of the guys. Of course that’s not 100% true, but I do feel comfortable like that. I don’t feel discriminated because of my sex. I guess maybe I am lucky? The only part that sometimes is difficult is being in the public eye. Not necessarily colleagues, but also fans, think they own you and can touch you and that’s something which I just have to let happen, and I can’t! I am also a person who has feelings. That remains a weird thing. That a lot of people know you and listen to your music and therefore think they own you. That is something, not specifically pointed towards my gender, because male singers also have this phenomenon.

Thanks for sharing your experience with that.
I know that live shows are not on the cards at the moment, but EPICA are know to have some grand production. What are some of the things that you think about when putting together a live show?
We are planning our live shows! Unfortunately our European tour got postponed for the second time. But we are still working behind the scenes to finalise everything for the stage. So, by the time we can tour, everything is ready. We are practicing the songs so that we have them in our system. We are planning a much bigger production for this album. Nowadays our colleagues are diving into the streaming entertainment business because that’s the way. We are also looking at options we can do because, being realistic, it might be that summer festivals are also going to be postponed once more. We have to keep that possibility in the back of our minds.

.

.

.

It’s been a while since EPICA have visited our sunny country. We can’t predict what the future holds, but we’d love to see you back here one day!
We’d love that too! So far we’ve been to Australia two times. I’m not 100% sure, maybe the third time in Australia? I think was two times. It’s so sad! So far away. It’s a beautiful country. The people are so nice. In a way, they feel very Dutch to me because they are very approachable and friendly. The first time we were in Australia I was pregnant. And I had a nasty cold! So, not a lot of touristic activities for me. I had to rest. But, I enjoyed it being in Australia. We had a couple of days off in Perth, so I could explore the city there a little bit more. I love the vibe there, so I would love to go back.

That’s beautiful! I’m actually from Perth. It’s cool that you got to explore my city.
Yeah! I was shopping there a little bit and eating ice cream. It was really nice. Of course, for us Europeans, it was a bit expensive. The food and stuff was like… wow! But you have my favourite ice cream! I’m so jealous! I love Peppermint ice cream and you have this peppermint Magnum. That was my guilty pleasure when I was pregnant. I’ve never seen it here in Europe. We have this Peppermint version of the Magnum but it’s not the same. You have the green peppermint ice cream with the chocolate, we have, the colour is just white, it tastes like peppermint but then they put chunks of peppermint in the chocolate layer.

Yeah, that’s not the same.
It’s kinda weird. Weird crunch. I wish we had your Magnum. I think I’ve seen in the UK? Maybe? But yeah, you’re lucky that you have that. If we go to Australia that’ll probably be the first thing that I eat!

I love that! Did you get a chance to visit Rottest Island while you were here?
No. We did go to a Koala/Kangaroo place. But that was when we entered Australia. I remember we flew from China to Australia. I was so exhausted! I went to the hotel to sleep a little bit. I was also pregnant, so I had to be careful. Then we had the opportunity to go to… I can’t remember the name. That was lovely but I was so, so tired. Brisbane! It was in Brisbane. The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I was like 5 months pregnant and I made a funny little photo with a pregnant Koala mum, like me, with a mini bump next to Koala, it was funny (Laughs).

That’s so cute!
I’m aware that I am running out of time so is there anything that I haven’t covered that you would like to talk about today?
No. Just that we are super stoked for our album to finally be released! We hope to be on the stage soon and playing the songs live and of course visiting Australia again, that would be amazing. But we have to, I guess, be extra patient.

.

EPICA is:

Simone Simons | vocals
Isaac Delahaye | guitars
Mark Jansen | guitars, grunts, screams
Coen Janssen | synths, piano
Ariën van Weesenbeek | drums
Rob van der Loo | bass

.

iTunes pre-sale link: HERE

.

Follow EPICA
Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter

.

.

Press release 30th November HERE

.

AMNPLIFY – DB